Africa has no future.

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

The world is always in movement.

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.

I've learned one important lesson in my life, and I'm going to share it with you. Don't worry about bad things that haven't happened yet. It will save you a lot of anxiety.

If I have to move up in a building, I choose the elevator over the escalator. Because one time I was riding the escalator and I tripped. I fell down the stairs for an hour and a half.

If you truly want to grow as a person and learn, you should realize that the universe has enrolled you in the graduate program of life, called loss.

If the wind and rain could play guitar, they would sound a lot like Doc Watson

My desire is to let go of my ego and let in His direction.

We wouldn't be as far along as a country if we didn't take on some of Martin Luther King's ways that he instilled in us.

Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.

Suspicion and persecution are weeds of the same dunghill, and flourish best together.

He wished he could've explained some of this. How he had been braver than he ever thought possible, but how he had not been so brave as he wanted to be. The distinction was important.

Sometimes you do know where the ideas are coming from and sometimes you don't. You might get a song coming through that you just don't know about.